This application relates to the customization of viewing environments by a viewing environment control application, including an interactive media guidance application or widget.
Interactive media guidance applications provide a tool for users to parse through information about media content that may be available to a user through various providers (e.g., internet, broadcast television, and video-on-demand). Widgets are applications that run on a user equipment device that provide specific functions that may access stored user information from the user equipment device (e.g., a gallery widget or address book widget on Android phones), current information about the hardware of the user equipment device (e.g., the iStat Nano system monitor widget on Mac OS), or information from the internet (e.g., a weather widget on Mac OS).
A user often manually changes his viewing environment depending on the program the user is watching. For example, when watching a movie, a user may turn off lights, turn up speaker volume and silence phones. Alternatively, when watching a television broadcast program, a user may turn off speaker volume during commercial breaks. Manually changing attributes of components can be cumbersome, especially as the number of components increases. Current interactive media guidance applications and widgets are deficient in enabling a user to modify his viewing environment as a function of accessed media content.